Household Chores Consume Me

“I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”
—from The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

It’s Spring Cleaning Time at my house. And at my mother’s house, to which I’ve contributed some muscle. Housework, for me, is a Sisyphean and mind-numbing activity. I sympathize with Nancy Mitford’s heroine. After hours of exertion, I too feel that something special has occurred and deserves recognition.

On the other hand, like the woman in the painting, I’m easily distracted while cleaning. What’s more, I’m not especially good at the task, largely because it bores me. So I guess this Lull post is the most I can hope for to mark the occasion—the shift from dirty to momentarily clean.

Hope your activities this weekend are more engaging than housework…

[Art by Edouard John Menta.]

My Left Thumb

The following post was written this summer, but my thumb still hurts.

Itzhak Perlman and I kicked off the weekend together this morning—he playing Saint-Saëns, I washing dishes. And suddenly, in a revelatory moment, I knew why my thumb had been hurting for the last few months: because it’s where I have rested every bloody thing we own—every champagne glass and ceramic platter and rustic basket and flute-playing angel and brass candlestick holder—as I cleaned it before either packing or selling it. Hundreds of items, large and small, heavy or light, have perched in the same spot on my left thumb and my thumb can’t take it anymore.

Barbara Kruger understands. (That’s her art above.) My previously small world has grown exponentially with every item that pops out of a drawer or stands in the shadows of a closet. It feels never-ending and has altered my identity. I have become The Dustbuster. And my poor thumb has suffered for it.

However, to improve my spirits, I started a new book. What better for a Dustbuster to read than Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust? It’s breezy, it’s funny, and it’s an altogether different world to escape to. (Of course, this isn’t the case if you’re part of the landed gentry.) It provides perfect relief from any kind of monotony that’s staked a claim on you.

And when I’m finished with it, I’m giving it away. I finally understand what mathematician Pál Erdös meant when he said, “Property is a nuisance.”